Nerdy And Loving It

Demons Souls is a game developed by From Software, the same studio that makes my favorite mecha series of games, Armored Core.  The game is published in the US by Atlas.

The premise of the game is that some king figures out a way to harness souls to become more powerful.  Everything is going great and his entire kingdom is prospering until he unwittingly wakes up the biggest baddest demon around called The Old One.  After The Old One is awakened a darkness covers the entire kingdom and it becomes overrun with demons. After a while, some guy escapes from the kingdom and lets the rest of the world know what’s going on.  You are one of the many warriors that have chosen to come to the demon infested kingdom to save it from The Old One.  Once you get to the demon filled kingdom you pretty much die almost immediately.  You are resurrected by The Lady In Black.  She tells you that she can resurrect you in soul form and you have a chance to get your body back (which gives you a full life bar instead of half life bar).  She also tells you that if The Old One is not forced to go back to sleep, presumably by killing lots of demon bosses, then the black fog that covers the current kingdom will slowly cover the entire world and everyone will be screwed.

I started the game as a soldier class because I wanted to mainly focus on melee combat and didn’t care too much about spells.  It turns out that your starting class doesn’t matter that much.  It just gives you different equipment to start with and slightly different stats.  Having more armor like a soldier or knight can make the beginning of the game more easy compared to starting with no armor like the barbarian.  Obviously some of the starting classes are intended to be used for magic type characters, but besides that, classes don’t really matter. Just so you know, the Royal class is the best for starting a magic based character because they start with a mana regen item.

So I started the game with my soldier, who I named Guts in honor of the Berserk Manga/Anime.  You learn all the basic stuff in the tutorial like how to move around, block, roll, and attack.  The button layout is a little different than most third person action/rpgs.  You attack with your right hand using R1 for normal attack and R2 for strong attack. L1 and L2 do the same if you have a weapon in your left hand.  If you have a shield then it will do a shield bash, which is pretty useless unless you time it for the exact moment that someone strikes you. The D-pad selects secondary weapons or shields with left and right for each hand.  You can have one extra weapon to switch to in each hand. Up is for magic and down is for items. O is run, roll, and leap back. Triangle is for switching to holding your weapon with both hands for more damage. X is for talking to people, hitting switches, and generally selecting stuff. Square is for using your currently selected item.  The button layout makes sense but I couldn’t help myself from accidentally hitting square to attack like most other games and wasted many healing items because of it.  The other thing I would do by accident is hit X when I wanted to use an item because on the screen it is the bottom selection in the four way display.  Again other games sometimes use the O, X, Square, and Triangle buttons to select powers and stuff like this.  It messed me up but it might not be as much of a problem for other people.  So anyway, I get to the end of the tutorial and am almost instantly killed by a giant demon.  It turns out that you aren’t supposed to beat him.  It’s a part of the story for you to die.

Then the real game starts.  You have to beat the whole first level (1-1) with half health.  If you search around in the level, however, you can find a ring that will allow you to have 75% health when is soul form.  This is a must for when you are in the beginning of the game.  One thing you may have heard about this game, it’s hard.  Really hard. Even the lowliest easiest enemies in the game are somewhat tough.  The dredglings will throw firebombs at you and leap at you. They will also sometimes lash out with their daggers a bunch of times in a row and can do some damage if you’re not careful. Also, don’t let them gang up on you because they can mess you up, even if you’re better equipped.  Besides the enemies being tough, the whole structure of the game makes it hard.  If you die you lose all of your souls.  If you get back to the spot where you died and hit X on your bloodstain, you can get them back, but if you died before you reach it you lose that bloodstain and start a new one with whatever you had up to that point.  Souls, by the way are the currency of the game and they are used for everything.  You need souls to buy weapons, upgrade weapons, repair weapons, buy spells, buy miracles, and buy stat points, which in turn level  you up.  So it sucks when you lose all your souls.  The other thing that makes the game hard is that when you die or leave the level to go back to town (The Nexus) all of the enemies respawn.

I started the game with my broadsword and shield.  I was having a tough time with them until I learned that if you use a spear you can hold up your shield to block, while you are attacking.  Now I have an upgraded shield and spear and the game’s a little easier.  Just expect to die a lot when you play.

I recently tried starting a magic based character instead of melee to see how they do and oh my god.  They make the game so much easier.  Enemies that would normally take a bunch of hits, and would block a lot of my attacks, followed up by healing themselves could now be killed in two hits with soul arrow.  Magic is so cheap.  You just stand from a distance and pick off everyone.  It doesn’t even matter that you’re just wearing cloth for armor.  You have to be sure to lock onto guys in order to shoot them, but you get used to it pretty quick.  The first boss was cake compared to when I fought him with my melee guy.  So, if you want the game to be much easier your first playthrough, my advice is to make a royal.  I haven’t gotten very far in the game yet, so magic being overpowered may change as you progress, but so far it rocks.

Update:

I’ve decided to play through the game with my melee guy and my magic character at the same time, alternating on levels.  I’ve been playing through the first level in each world and am currently at level 4-1.  I’m finally starting to see my melee character catch up to and surpass my magic user, so perhaps magic users aren’t as cheap as I thought.  Now that my melee guy has tons of strength and an upgraded shield, his endurance doesn’t go down very fast when blocking.  This allows him to negate all damage as long as he’s attacked from the front and has endurance left.  He has so much strength that he can kill the skeletons in the beginning of the level with one hit with his spikey club.  My magic user has more trouble.  The large shield that she carries blocks all damage like my melee guy, but her endurance drops like a rock when she’s hit, so the skeletons have an easier time getting a hit in.

I’ve found that the magic user has started to become a play-style where you keep shooting while backing up the whole time.  A melee character, on the other hand, can just hold their shield up, negate all damage for a while, and then attack when they see opportunities.  Now that my melee guy can hit pretty hard relative to the current enemies, I’ll start upgrading his endurance more so he can take even more attacks with his shield and can attack for longer with the added endurance.  It’s too bad that you don’t get the really cool spells until the end of the game.  I want moving soul arrow (3 spinning orbs spin around you and attack automatically) and firestorm (AOE fire damage).  I think I’ll be stuck with boring projectiles for a while.

I’ve been thinking about melee characters a bit and I think the best starting class for a melee character is either the knight or the temple knight.  I picked soldier, but now that I have the flutet armor and a good shield I can deal with enemies much more easily.  The knight and temple knight get this armor or it’s equivalent at the very start of the game.  This would be a huge help.  Also, you can’t use miracles until you get the talisman of god for most characters, so if you want heal and evacuate, which is very useful (instant teleport to the nexus and you keep all your souls), you could choose the temple knight just for that.  You would also only need 3 more points in Faith to get two miracle slots.  You won’t have much mana to use heal, but you’ll get tons of fresh spice in 3-1 from the scary prison guards.  I think those guys are scarier prison guards than dementors.

More updates to come later.

There are several ways to become Zero Suit Samus in Smash Bros Brawl.

1. Hold down the R button on the gamecube controller. (classic controler: R button, nunchuck combo: Z button, Wii Remote only – minus button)
2. Destroy the final smash ball using Samus and activate her final smash. Remember that this works both ways, so if you play with items you can switch back from Zero Suit Samus.
3. Tap the up and down taunt back and forth until she changes. Note: you cannot change back using this method, so make sure you want Zero Suit Samus.

I found method three impossible to do, so I looked it up online and found this video on youtube. After watching it, I can easily change to Zero Suit Samus. Take a look.

If this video ever gets taken down, this action is easiest to perform if you turn the controller sideways and use one finger to basically rub the d-pad from the center from up taunt to down taunt and back very fast like you are trying to rub some dirt off of something with a single finger.

Hopefully this helps someone.

As an added bonus: You can select Sheik from the character select screen by moving the hand down over Sheik’s picture after selecting Zelda and clicking on Sheik. You can click back on Zelda as well.

I learned about this Counter-Strike Source Mod recently called Warcraft Source (aka WCS).  The mod plays the same as any normal Counter-Strike match with the same guns and maps for the most part, except you have powers.  Each class in the game has different abilities such as faster running speed, partial invisibility, more damage, summoning weapons, flying, slowing people down, and many more.

Here are the first few classes, just to give you an idea (note that the following text is taken verbatim from the game):

1. Undead Scourge
   1. Vampiric Aura – Gives you a 60% chance to gain 12-30% of the damage you do in attack, back as health
   2. Unholy Aura – Gives you a speed boost, 8-36% faster
   3. Levitation – Allows you to jump higher by reducing your gravity for 8-64%
   4. Suicide Bomber – On death, you have a 20-70% chance to explode and make 70-160 damage on each player in 12-18 feet range
2. Human Alliance
   1. Invisibility – Makes you partially invisible, 62-37%
   2. Devotion Aura – Gives you additional 15-50 health each round
   3. Bash – Have a 15-32% chance to render an enemy immobile for 1 second
   4. Teleport – Allows you to teleport to where you aim, range is 60-108 feet
3. Orcish Horde
   1. Critical Strike – Gives you a 15% chance of doing 40-240% more damage
   2. Critical Grenade – Grenades will always do a 40-240% more damage
   3. Reincarnation – Gives you a 15-80% chance of respawning once, with old equipment and where you died
   4. Chain Lightning – Discharges a bolt of lightning that jumps on up to 4 nearby enemies 40-75 feet range, dealing each 32 damage
4. Night Elves
   1. Evasion – Gives you 5-30% chance of evading a shot
   2. Thorns Aura – Does 30% mirror damage to the person who shot you, chance to activate 15-50%
   3. Trueshot Aura – Does 10-60% extra damage to the enemy, chance is 30%
   4. Entangling Roots – Every enemy in 25-60 feet range will not be able to move for 10 seconds

There are also items to buy in the game.  Here are a few examples:

1. Necklace of Immunity – Makes you immune to enemy ultimates.  Use this if you keep dying to someone blowing up.
2. Orb of Frost – causes frost dmg to slow your enemy’s movement.
3. Ankh of reincarnation – Saves your equipment for the next round if you die.  This is useful when you’re short on money and are buying expensive weapons.
4. Boots of Speed – Makes you 20% faster.  This can be bought up to three times.
5. Cloak of Shadows – Gives you 75% invisibility.  This is very useful, especially on bigger maps.
6. Scroll of Respawning – respawns you.  Fun to come back and get revenge for someone killing you.  This can be annoying if someone keeps doing it over and over.  Personally, I would rather see this item removed, since there are classes with a ressurect skill.
7. Disguiser – makes you look like the enemy.  This only lasts one round.
8. Mole – this makes you spawn at the enemy spawn location after a 3 seconds.  Very fun to mess with people using this.  There is a later class called Agent that randomly uses this.
9. Tome of Experience – this gives you experience.  It’s useful because you only get so much experience per win and per kill.  By buying these you can level up much faster.  I would actually prefer they get rid of items like this and just give more xp for kills.

To find a WCS server just go to the very bottom of the Counter-Strike server list and look for a server called Warcraft Source or WCS.

Here is a link to the WCS homepage.  You can read the forums if you are interested in hosting your own server or helping create new classes. http://warcraft-source.com/board/index.php?action=forum

I know there are a bunch of companies working on stuff like this, but this is by far the best facial animation that I’ve ever seen.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4557935.ece

Here is their website:

http://www.image-metrics.com/

There are several more videos on the website.  Check it out.

Ever since I heard about this game I thought it sounded like a very promising and cool idea for a shooter. Just imagine, I thought to myself, stop time steal all the guns from a crowd of bad guys and restart time and have all of them go “what the…”. It turns out my hunch was right. Timeshift is extremely fun.

The premise is that you are a Physicist working on a top secret project to build a suit that can travel through time. Everything is going well until one day the lead Scientist, Dr. Krone, steals the early alpha version of the suit and sets up a bomb to blow up the entire facility, including the beta version of the suit currently in development. Thinking quickly the silent protagonist of a main character puts on the beta suit and jumps (through time) out of the building before the bomb goes off. He wakes up sometime in the past, only nothing is how it should be. Krone has altered time and formed a new world. He attempting to rule the world through his knowledge of advanced technology and cannot be stopped by any normal man due to his time suit. You join the resistance movement and off you go.

The gameplay of Timeshift makes up for any other shortcomings in any other category. It’s just damn fun to play. You get to use three types of time control: time slow, time stop, and time reverse. You mostly will use time slow and time stop. Time reverse is rarely used in any sort of combat situation. (I played the PC version, so I’ll be referencing controls based off the keyboard.) You can assign each of the three time powers to a button (I chose Z, X, and C instead of using shift in combination with these) and you push another button for a sort of automatic choice time power (I chose T). For the most part you don’t really even have to choose what power you are going to use because pressing T chooses the right power for most situations. This generally applies to puzzles or stuff blocking your way. It also applies to combat with certain enemies, where T will stop time instead of slowing it. There are a variety of weapons including your generic machine gun with grenade alternate fire, a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, a flame thrower/more powerful machine gun with less ammo, a crossbow that fires bolts (short arrows) with a detonation device on it that makes a person blow up when hit and a scope with different zoom levels (if you couldn’t tell this is my favorite weapon), a gun that lobs energy orbs and can charge up a energy blast, a worthless handgun, and an extremely cheap gun that you won’t see till way later in the game the kills most guys instantly. The gun that kills guys instantly shoots orbs of blue energy blasts that are more powerful that the other energy gun and the alternate fire sends out a constant beam of blue electricity which pretty much kills most guys instantly. It’s probably a good thing that they didn’t include this gun until later in the game because it is incredibly cheap. You can only carry three guns at one time and you can switch them out whenever you find new ones. Your current weapons carry over into every new area except the last one. My chosen three are the machine gun with grenade launcher, the crossbow (of doom), and the rocket launcher. This allowed me to have a fair amount of ammo for a close range weapon, a long range weapon that kills people no matter where you hit them because they blow up anyway, and a rocket launcher for large groups of guys or for when you want to have fun just blowing up one. There are ammo chests in select areas of the missions which will help you get ammo for a weapon if the guys in the level aren’t carrying it.

My favorite weapon, the crossbow.

Fighting soldiers is relatively the same. Slow down time, pop out from your hidy-hole or crate and shoot guys, then hide again and wait for your shields and time meter to recharge. However, fighting some of the other things in the game was a lot of fun. There’s a giant mech (read giant robot that a guy rides in with big powerful guns that kill you quick) that you have to avoid being shot by while running up levels of a building with destroyed walls by slowing time so he doesn’t kill you immediately. There are also a few helicopter fights reminiscent of shooting down helicopters and those weird living drop ship things in half life 2. The health is similar to halo’s recharging shield system where you have a certain amount of shield and when it runs out you die, but it recharges after some amount of time of not taking damage. I actually haven’t played many shooters that use the shield system (I know I’m out of touch and need to play more) but I have to say that it really helps keep the game moving. No searching for health packs or reloading a save because you lost more health than you would have liked to, or having to play a level over again because you needed way more health to beat a tough boss at the end. Also I should mention that the time powers aren’t too cheap because they only last a short time. I know I mentioned that I thought you would be able to stop time a steal a large group of guys’ guns, but in order to do that they would all have to be relatively close to on another and that doesn’t happen very often. Slowing time drains your time bar the slowest, then stopping and reversing. The puzzles are also pretty fun. They all involve using your time powers of course. There is this one puzzle with a rotating fan that turns like a water wheel and I thought you had to freeze or slow time to get through it, but I found out that you could reverse time to reverse it’s movement and have it push you through when I pushed the T button.

These mechs are found in several levels.

There are several vehicle sections in the game. One of the vehicle sections is where you are riding in a giant blimp with large platforms on the sides with gun turrets. Your job during this section is to shoot down mines in the air tied to balloons and later shoot down jets that fly by. You can still use your time powers here so it’s fun to slow time and shoot down the jets. It may sound simple, but I found this part a lot of fun. There’s also a later blimp section where you shoot down helicopters. The other vehicle section is where you ride an ATV. This section would have been more fun if you could actually control the ATV. The steering is terrible. If you barely bump a key to steer it moves so far over that it’s mostly unusable. I had to resort to tapping the gas a little at a time in order to steer. I tried using the mouse too, but it wasn’t any better.

The blimp with gun turrets.

As far as the graphics go my pc was a poor representation of good graphics because it’s old and slow (one of the reasons I’ll be getting a ps3 soon). I did get to play the start of the game on the ps3 at a friend’s house and it definitely looked good there. The rain effects in the beginning looked great. I liked how when you stop time, run up to a guy, and shoot him in the face, blood splatters on the screen as if it were on your mask.